Minds and Machines by Alan Ross AndersonReview by: J. F. S.Foundations of Language, Vol. 4, No. 2 (May, 1968), p. 220Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25000017 .

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SHORT NOTICES

Milos Prazak, Language and Logic. Philosophical Library, New York, 1963. 154 pp., $3.00.

A mere jumble of (other people's) ideas about everything in the universe, without one single original thought, for which any other configuration of English words would have served as a title equally well.

P. W.

F. H. George, Semantics (The Teach Yourself Books). The English Universities Press, London, 1964. xii + 172 pp., 7s. 6d.

Teach Yourself Semantics (the Publishers offer to help you Teach Yourself Logic, Per sonal Efficiency, Political Thought, Psychical Research and many other useful skills as well, all this in uniform blue volumes) consists of an Introduction, ten chapters (I. Semantics and Science; II. Semantics and Linguistics; III. The Physical Facts of Language; IV. The Semantic Movement; V. Theory of Signs; VI. Philosophers and Language; VII. Logic; VIII. Information Theory; IX. Computer Languages; X. Semantics Today), an Appendix on further Reading, and an Index. Even though every chapter is preceded by an 'Argument' "intended as a key to what is discussed in the chapter "and is followed by a (very short) summary, it is sometimes not easy to decide what part a particular chapter plays within the framework of the book. Nor, for that matter, is the existence of a framework very apparent, which, no doubt, is partly due to the subject. If conceived as a series of elementary introduction to topics falling under or relating to semantics, it must be said that these introductions are not very illuminating. Even in the context of a single page the gist of the

argument is often difficult to grasp, not because the style is forbiddingly technical, but rather because a paragraph may seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the preceding or the following one. Since the general set-up is engaging and the author evidently knows his way about, it is to be hoped that there will soon be a second edition where these defects of presentation will have been remedied.

P. W.

Alan Ross Anderson (ed.), Minds and Machines (Contemporary Perspectives in Philosophy Series). Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964. viii + 114 pp.

This anthology is timely and helpful. It may profitably replace another easily available

paperback, i.e., Dimensions of Mind; A Symposium (ed. by Sidney Hook), New York

1960, as it contains the more important papers of the latter. Papers continue to appear in this area (e.g., R. Pucetti I, 'Can Humans Think?', Analysis 26 (1966) 198-202) and yet another anthology may be needed before long. The present one contains an Introduction

by A. R. Anderson; 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' by A. M. Turing; 'The Mechanical Concept of Mind' by Michael Scriven; 'Minds, Machines and Godel' by J. R. Lucas; 'The Imitation Game' by Keith Gunderson; 'Minds and Machines' by Hilary Putnam; 'The Feelings of Robots' by Paul Ziff; 'Professor Ziff on Robots' by J. J. C.

Smart; 'Robots Incorporated' by Ninian Smart; and a Selected Bibliography. Apart from the classic article by Turing, it is probably the paper by H. Putnam that is

most interesting from the point of view of a linguistic philosopher. Putnam argues that sentences such as 'Mental state W is identical with brain state i' are deviant in present-day English, but might become non-deviant given a suitable increase in our scientific insight into the physical nature and causes of human behaviour. According to Putnam, the mind

body problem is strictly analogous to Turing's 'problem' of the relation between structural and logical states. The mind-body problem, then, is just as empty and just as verbal.

J.F. S.

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